SYSTEMS

THIS CHAPTER . . .

elaborates upon a point raised in the introduction: that politics is not an activity confined to modern liberal democratic national govern- ments. Chapter 1 argued that politics can be seen in personal and organisational activity – a point to be developed further in relation to our later discussions of feminism, anarchism and ecology. This chapter analyses the politics of societies without formal governments and the systems of government in kingdoms and empires before considering the focus of modern politics: the nation state. It considers the extent to which developments at a supranational level constitute a threat to the dominance of such states. Political ‘system’ is being used here in a loose sense to denote a complex of interconnecting political activities in a society or societies – it does not imply the adoption of any particular system model.

STATES AND SOCIETIES

For a graphic illustration of the thesis that politics is not just about how states are run, let us consider the case of societies without a state and see if we can identify anything resembling what we would normally think of as ‘politics’.

2

This raises the issue of what is meant by a state. At this stage, let us ignore some complicated academic arguments and settle upon a working definition (Box 2.1) from Max Weber [1864–1920], a liberal German sociologist.

BOX 2.1 DEFINITION OF ‘STATE’

This reflects the way most people probably see the world today. The globe is seen as divided into a series of exclusive geographical areas (countries or nations), each of which has a government whose people recognise its authority to maintain order amongst them, by force in the last resort if necessary. This government may, of course, be divided into central, regional and local levels and executive, legislative and judicial arms, but all these bodies are seen as a system for taking decisions on behalf of the nation (or society) and maintaining law and order.

POLITICS WITHOUT THE STATE: TRIBAL SOCIETIES

This is a picture we shall be questioning later. For now let us point out that until very recently ‘tribal’ groups have been ‘discovered’ in the forests of Papua New Guinea and Brazil living apparently undisturbed by the governments which purport to represent them at the United Nations. Of course such tribal groups may be thought of merely as traditional ‘mini-states’ and as only a minor deviation from Weber’s model. However, social anthropologists who study such groups in detail have shown convincingly that tribal societies may differ radically from the state model of government.

Social anthropologists often avoid the use of ‘tribal’ in this con- text as implying a condescending view of the peoples concerned as

Power

An organisation ‘that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’.

(Weber, in Gerth and Mills, 1948: 78)

primitive – this is not the authors’ intention. Many of the groups concerned have sophisticated cultures, high levels of artistic achievement and admirable ways of life. ‘Tribal’ is used here as an easily intelligible synonym for what anthropologists frequently term

‘simple societies’ – those having common cultures (e.g. one religion and language), undifferentiated role structures (most people do a small range of similar jobs), with strong emphasis on kinship and custom (Mitchell, 1959). Following Weber, the defining characteristic of such societies may be taken to be a claim to common ancestry.

One way in which these groups differ from the state model of government is in terms of territory. Whilst many such groups do have what they regard as their own territory, some are so nomadic that they can make no such claim. Groups like the Fulani of northern Nigeria herd cattle through lands partially cultivated by others. The Kalahari Bushmen and similar groups range broadly over deserts or forests which may also be used by other groups. Such groups think of government as a property of what sociologists describe as the kin group – all those people descended from a common ancestor or married to such persons. Hence the idea of the ‘blood brother’ – to become a member of the group it is necessary either to marry into it or to be adopted as a member of a particular small family group.

Still more startling to the modern Western citizen than such groups’ relative indifference to the idea of a territory being subject to a particular code of law, is the absence in some of them of anything resembling a fixed governmental organisation. Whilst the absence of a chief or council might not be regarded as so strange in tiny groups such as the !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari desert (Marshall, 1961), it seems almost incredible in groups numbering as many as a million or more such as the pre-colonial Tiv of Nigeria (Bohannan, 1965).

How can centralised political institutions be avoided in such societies? One explanation lies in the attitude to law found in most tribal societies. Western societies (following the nineteenth-century English jurist, Austin) tend to see law as the creation of a sovereign representative legislature. Tribal societies see law as a part of the way of life inherited from their ancestors. Thus living human beings only interpret and enforce the authority of the ancestors and no legislature is necessary. Such a view is clearly only tenable in relatively stable societies – although, as Gluckman (1965) points out, rebellion against those interpreting the law is perfectly possible in such a system.

What is unthinkable is the revolutionary process of replacing existing laws with new ones. The inflexibility of such a system can easily be exaggerated since in practice, as with English common law, old laws can be reinterpreted in new circumstances or quietly ignored as being no longer appropriate.

But does not the enforcement of law and the defence of the group require centralised government? The example of the Tiv suggests one way round this problem. They operated what the social anthro- pologists term a ‘segmentary lineage system’. This means basically that every Tiv’s place in society is governed by the lineage to which they belong – i.e. how they are descended from the ancestor of the group, ‘Tiv’. It is not that the more closely related you are to the founder of the tribe the more important you are – there is no royal family since all are held to descend from the same source. Thus every Tiv is equal and a fierce egalitarianism reigns. Instead, in any dispute people claiming descent in the same line are expected to take sides together. Naturally should non-Tiv attack a Tiv, all members of the group would be expected to assist if need be. If fighting or quarrelling takes place between Tiv, however, support would be due to people in

‘your’ lineage.

Such a system seems merely to encourage conflict and disorder. If everyone can rely on a host of supporters in a dispute with others, will not disputes be the order of the day? Especially in a situation where there are no established permanent tribal chiefs or headmen (in the sense this is usually understood). In fact, though, the system seems to have worked well in practice. One reason for this was the existence of a considerable consensus on the customs (laws) to be applied. Disputes were not automatically the subject of violence or warfare but settled through meetings (or ‘moots’) of those concerned in the broad, Tiv, sense. After a certain amount of more or less violent posturing, the form was for all to have their say on the rights and wrongs of the dispute with relatives helping the aggrieved sides to present their case. Then a resolution of the dispute was attempted by mediation between the two lineages. If a solution could not be found the two groups would remain ‘at daggers drawn’ until a solution could be found.

In such a situation a premium was placed on bargaining and reconciliation rather than mechanical law enforcement. Many of those on either side might not feel too deeply affronted by (say) an

alleged case of adultery, failure to pay up on a dowry payment or words said in a drunken brawl. But everyone would be severely inconvenienced if the other lineage in the village was not prepared to co-operate in the next hunt or harvest. An additional subtlety, which modified any tendency to take disputes too far, was the consideration that your opponents in this dispute might be needed in a larger dispute with more distantly related Tiv at some time in the future!

The Tiv are only one example of numerous tribal societies that have existed without centralised governmental institutions. Many have used some variation of the combination of ‘feuding’ and informal reconciliation systems practised by them. Additionally though, disputes might be settled by resort to oracles like the famous classical Greek oracle at Delphi, in which disputes were arbitrated upon using magical signs resulting from sacrifices. The ambiguity of some of these pronouncements may well have been a sensible political device on the part of the oracle, or medicine man, to avoid identification with either side and promote a negotiated settlement.

Other societies practised a division of functions on an ‘age grade’

basis in which, for instance, the oldest men might collectively manage relationships with the gods, another male age group constitute the leaders of the hunt, the oldest women practise medicine, and so on. In some groups important functions connected with warfare, law and order, or magic might be vested in secret or title societies, member- ship of which had to be earned by giving feasts to existing members, undergoing initiation ceremonies and performing subordinate roles in a trainee grade. In such societies skill in magic or warfare might be rewarded by promotion ‘on merit’, or promotion might depend upon seniority.

Authority in such societies might rest upon a variety of founda- tions – a reputation for wisdom in settling disputes, knowledge of traditional remedies for illness, ability as a war leader or merely being the grandparent of a very large (polygamous) family. Such authority figures might well be known by a title which translates into English as ‘chief’ – but their powers were often far from the absolute despotisms imagined by many early Western writers on these subjects. (Of course, chiefs in some tribal societies did have what we might regard as ‘despotic’ authority, e.g. Shaka the nineteenth- century Zulu chief who ordered whole battalions of his men to commit suicide as a demonstration of his absolute authority.)

In these tribal ‘stateless societies’, then, there is law rather than anarchy (in the everyday sense of no guarantees of law and order);

equally, collective decisions on self-defence and economic co- operation are also made – but in a decentralised fashion. Many members of these societies would also emphasise that collective activities also occur on a spiritual level. In short, life continues and even apparently prospers without the state with its accompanying mechanisms of professional armies, bureaucrats, prisons and the like.

It is not surprising that, consequently, some modern thinkers – anarchists in the technical sense – have argued that the same is possible in a modern context. We shall examine their views at more length in Chapter 3. First, however, it is interesting to look at another example of what might be described as ‘politics without the state’, although this is perhaps a slightly more arguable case.

FEUDALISM

This second example is the feudal system – particularly as it was practised in Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries – though it has also applied in other parts of the world, such as in pre-modern Japan (Reischaur, 1956; Prawer and Eisenstadt, 1968). European feudalism is of interest as being perhaps ‘nearer to home’ for con- temporary European readers, and as showing the state as we under- stand it to be a more recent innovation than some may have imagined.

It may also suggest some lessons for the future of Europe.

At first sight, feudal Europe was full of states and mini-states, rather than stateless. Did not England, France, Poland and other familiar states already exist in this period – admittedly accompanied by extra ‘players’ on the international scene like Burgundy, Saxony and Venice? The appearance of kings, dukes and doges on the scene would seem to indicate the presence of strong centralized decision- making institutions for these territories. The similarity of names with institutions and territories of later periods may well, however, be quite misleading. Outside of England and France, particularly, it soon becomes clear that the idea of a number of territories each with its own legal jurisdiction is quite inappropriate.

This is clearest in the area round about what is now Germany in what was misleadingly called the Holy Roman Empire (accurately

described as neither ‘Holy’, ‘Roman’ nor an ‘Empire’ by Voltaire [1694–1778] (1756: Ch. LXX). The empire masked a confusing array of jurisdictions. The ‘Holy Roman Emperor’ was the nominal supreme ruler of a hotchpotch of kingdoms, dukedoms, sovereign bishoprics, independent or federated cities and the like. His powers over each were different and ill-defined. The heads of some of these territories had the power to elect the emperor’s successor. The Catholic Church, in the shape of the pope, claimed powers over the emperor and his ‘vassals’ (those who had sworn allegiance to him), which in later times were felt to be ‘sovereign’ prerogatives. Equally the Church claimed exclusive jurisdiction over all the clergy and many matters of family law – as well as rights to censorship and the levying of separate clerical ‘taxes’. In some cases incumbents of independent kingdoms such as France and Spain held territory within the Empire as nominal vassals of the emperor or some other ‘ruler’.

Similar confusions were to be seen in relationships between the King of England in his capacity as Duke of Normandy and the King of France.

Law enforcement and defence were the subject of a patchwork of rights and privileges, the consequence of a pyramid of personal relationships between lords and vassals. Each vassal, in turn, was lord to an inferior group of aristocrats, until one descends to the level of the ordinary knight in his manor. At the aristocratic level the possession of land entailed not only something like the modern idea of ownership, but, perhaps more, the notion of government. In principle, in the early feudal period, land could only be held by those prepared to administer and, most importantly, defend it. Hence only adult fighting men could hold land. If, for instance, the king gave land to a duke, the only way the duke could hope to hold it was by sub- contracting the administration and defence of much of it to a group of earls or counts. Each earl or count, in turn, would obtain the allegiance of knights to hold particular manors, or fortified villages.

One consequence of this is, logically, an overlapping of juris- dictions in that the same area would be under the control of (in our example) a king, a duke, a count and a knight. Undoubtedly, also, the Church would also claim jurisdiction in some cases. For that matter it was common for hard-up lords to grant jurisdiction in commercial matters to town councils through charters – the terms of which some councils in Britain still preserve and attempt to enforce.

In practice lords were interested primarily in matters relating to their feudal dues – the equivalent of modern taxation and rents originally primarily payable in labour services. The lord might quite frequently originate from a different part of Europe, linguistically and culturally isolated from his serfs – so that they would often prefer to seek justice through informal community channels. Amongst lords, appeals to judgement by legalistic tribunals were often avoided in favour of trial by combat or through the pursuit of feuds or vendettas which could operate in very similar ways to the system described earlier in relation to the Tiv (Bloch, 1961).

Thus it is clear that in the feudal period, as in tribal stateless societies, conflicts over the allocation of resources could be resolved;

communities could make decisions about their defence and economic welfare; but no effective and centralised state machinery existed to carry this out.

STATES WITHOUT NATIONS: KINGDOMS

At a later stage in European history, some individual feudal terri- tories evolved over several centuries into something much more like a modern state. Kingdoms emerged with distinct boundaries within which central authorities claimed exclusive jurisdiction, sophisticated judicial systems with rights of appeal from local courts up to the centre, a taxation system divorced from the rents payable to the owners of land, and, in some cases, representative legislative assemb- lies. Part of the attraction of the Protestant Reformation for princes was the opportunity both to assert legal control over matters such as family law which had previously been Church matters and to reassign extensive Church property holdings to themselves and their supporters. Henry VIII’s example in these matters was accompanied by similar phenomena in countries such as Sweden, whilst even Catholic monarchs such as Louis XIV began to assert control over religious orders, and to negotiate greater influence over the Church in their territory.

In essence similar political institutions to these kingdoms were also found in many other parts of the world. For instance, in what is now Nigeria at about the same period it seems likely that sizeable kingdoms existed in Benin, Yorubaland (Oyo) and in Hausaland

(Kano, etc.), whilst much earlier such kingdoms were to be found in India and Central America.

By definition, a kingdom can be regarded an example of dynastic politics. That is, they are not so much governments by individuals as by families. In the European examples this usually meant that the state was regarded as all the possessions of a single family regardless of geographical sense or the ethnic or national origins. Thus the modern United Kingdom includes Scotland, Wales and parts of Ireland, as well as the Channel Isles, because the kings of England inherited these areas from the Duchy of Normandy, succeeded to the separate throne of Scotland, or conquered adjacent lands. The king- dom was not united by linguistic, cultural or religious similarities.

Other members of the family were frequently expected to take a major role in government – queens ruling in the absence of kings, the eldest son of the Crown of England being designated Prince of Wales.

Similarly, Belgium and Holland could be regarded as possessions of the Spanish royal family. Within a royal family, rival claims to the succession could arise, and conflict between young supporters of the heir to the throne and established counsellors of the king was virtually the norm.

In the African examples mentioned, the family’s role took very different shapes. Within the context of polygamy, there was more scope for dispute as to succession. Such disputes taking the most drastic form were in Zululand where it was usual for the king to execute any brothers who failed to go into hasty voluntary exile (Lemarchand, 1977). In the Yoruba kingdoms a version of the succession crisis involved ‘king-makers’ selecting the heir from the ranks of a number of princely families who each provided a king in turn.

These monarchic political systems shared a ‘court’ style of politics in which the administration of the royal household and its estates were inseparable from the business of the kingdom as a whole. Power in such systems might well reside primarily with those who most frequently had the ear of the monarch regardless of official position.

This might include the king’s mistress, confessor or hairdresser. The politics of such a system is primarily conducted within a consensus on fundamental values (those of the tribe or ruling aristocracy).

There is emphasis on individual advancement through patronage; a powerful patron rewards his supporters and followers with benefits